


Cups for Cold Hands

by infernalandmortal



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Coffee Shops, F/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 23:00:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15650691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infernalandmortal/pseuds/infernalandmortal
Summary: Schooling her features, Emori turns. “Can I help you?”If he’s taken aback by the tattoo on her face or the shape of her deformed left hand, he doesn’t show it. Emori will give him credit for not even flinching.“I actually wanted to introduce myself.” He extends a hand to her. Behind him, Raven and Harper stop their work to stare, and Bellamy closes his book and sits up a little straighter in the armchair. “I’m Murphy.” He seems to catch himself. “John Murphy. I’m opening the bakery down the street.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this moodboard](http://the-most-beautiful-broom.tumblr.com/post/175989461657/memori-bakery-au-for-blueshirtbell-emori-swats-at). Thanks for letting me write this, Lindsey!
> 
> Unedited, except by me, so please roast me for any errors.

Emori is just starting to get used to her new normal when John Murphy walks through her door. 

Okay, to be fair, she didn’t know him as John Murphy. She knows him as “Guy Whose Bakery Is Going To Steal My Customers,” and sure, she’s pissed at the concept, but there’s nothing she can do, so she settles for glaring at the construction down the street and kicking pebbles past the wire gate whenever the hammering wakes her up on weekends. 

Anyway. She’s minutes away from opening on a chilly Friday morning when Raven and Harper clatter through the front entrance, shedding sweatshirts and hats and chattering loudly. 

“Morning,” Emori says, waving at Raven and sparing a smile for Harper as the younger girl pours herself a cup of black coffee. “You had a date last night, right?”

“That she did,” Raven yells from the kitchen. Harper groans, leaning on the counter and hiding her smile in her long hair. “Tell her how it went, Harper.”

Emori smiles at Raven’s shit-eating grin. Harper rolls her eyes. “Turns our Raven lives right below the guy I’ve been seeing.”

Emori winces in sympathy. “I am  _ so  _ sorry.”

Harper chuckles. “It’s fine. We didn’t do anything more than stay up all night talking.” A soft smile flits across her face, completely involuntarily. Emori feels jealousy rise up in her, swift and strong, and tamps it down. 

“I’m happy for you,” she says instead, patting Harper on the shoulder before rounding the corner and flipping the sign on the door to ‘open’.

A steady stream of customers keep them busy for the entire morning. To Emori’s irritation, most of them ask her what she’s “going to do” about that bakery down the street. 

“Nothing I can do,” she says to Bellamy Blake, one of her regulars and the brother of one of her other employees, Octavia. “It’s a free country.”

“Aren’t you worried he’ll take your business?”

Raven smirks from over by the cups. “Please. We have superior coffee. That’s all you need in this business.”

Bellamy looks like he wants to retort, then decides against getting into it with Raven. He sits down in the armchair near the handoff plane and opens a heavy textbook. 

“Nerd,” Harper says affectionately as she passes to clear tables. Bellamy rolls his eyes at her, his expression fond. Another pang of jealousy stabs Emori in the chest. 

The shop empties out at about ten, when the majority of their regulars have to get to their jobs and their boring lives. Emori thinks about shooing Raven off the job a couple hours early so she can work on the homework assignment Emori knows is giving her grief, but she knows the young engineering student needs the money. And, besides, she likes the other girl’s company. 

The bell on the front door rings, upsetting the quiet of the shop. Emori rounds the corner to crouch near the bookshelf, where the ancient sound system is housed. 

“Need a hand?” a male voice asks from behind her. Emori freezes for a small second, startled, then carefully resumes fiddling with the buttons on the small black box. 

“I’ve got it.” She smiles when soft acoustic music filters from the speakers. “Just needed some music.”

“I’ve heard good things about it myself,” the man says drily, a small note of humor in his voice. 

Schooling her features, Emori turns to face him. “Can I help you?”

If he’s taken aback by the tattoo on her face or the shape of her deformed left hand, he doesn’t show it. Emori will give him credit for not even flinching. “I actually wanted to introduce myself.” He extends a hand to her. Behind him, Raven and Harper stop their work to stare, and Bellamy closes his book and sits up a little straighter in the armchair. “I’m Murphy.” He seems to catch himself. “John Murphy. I’m opening the bakery down the street.”

Emori shakes his hand. His grip is strong. The calluses on his fingers and palm feel familiar against her own. “Nice to meet you,” she says, fighting to keep the coolness from her tone because, despite her bravado, she  _ is _ worried about the toll his shop will take on her income. 

“Oh,” she says after a moment. It’s been a while since she’s met anyone new, aside from customers that don’t really care about anything except their caffeine fix. “I’m Emori. The owner. That’s Raven, and Harper.” She gestures to the girls, who wave. 

John gives them a small, almost cheeky, wave, then stuffs his hands in his pockets. His slim shoulders bunch up under his blue sweater. It matches his eyes, Emori notices. She succinctly ignores the heat that rises to her face at that observation. 

“Your construction wakes me up,” she says instead. “I live upstairs and I’m sick of the noise.”

To her surprise, John frowns. “What? When?”

“Every weekend,” Emori says. “I like to sleep in every Saturday but when they get started at seven in the morning, I don’t get the chance.”

John shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I told them to wait until nine on weekends. I’ll talk to the construction manager today.”

Not the response she was expecting. “Okay,” she says. 

“Okay.” He looks around the small dining room, then takes a step back. “I should probably get going.”

Emori swats at the butterflies in her stomach as John smiles at her, eyes sharp, then nods to the rest of the coffee shop and makes his exit. The door has barely closed when Harper is flying around the counter to stand next to Emori, bumping her hip with hers. 

“Are you kidding me?” Harper hisses. “That’s the guy who’s opening the bakery down the street?”

Emori purses her lips, wondering if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that Harper noticed he was staring too. She smooths her apron, her voice steady by the time she responds pointedly. “You mean the guy who’s trying to steal all our business? Yep, that’s the one.”

"Em,” Harper gapes at her, “he came down here to introduce himself to the competition; that’s a gentleman’s move. He’s not trying to steal anything.”

“Except maybe Emori’s heart,” Raven preens from behind the espresso machine, not even dodging the coffee filter Emori throws at her. 

* * *

She wakes up at 8:35 the next morning. There’s no sound in the air. At 9:01, the construction crew’s bangs and shouts filter through her open windows from down the street.

She can’t help but smile. Then, her phone rings, and that smile fades, but only slightly.

“How’s your new normal?” Bellamy asks her, his voice tinny from the speakers of her battered phone.

She doesn’t flinch, but something inside her cringes at the words. “Fine.” Her voice sounds tight, exhausted. “The shop is good.”

“You’re really turning it around,” he says carefully. “But...it’s okay to not be okay.”

“I’m okay,” she says. “Seriously.”

Bellamy doesn’t seem to buy it. “If you say so.”

Emori stares at the cracks in her bedroom wall until he hangs up. Some of them are from old plaster; others are from the two bad nights when she slammed her fists into the blank white canvas until her knuckles cracked and bled and her bad hand ached so much she was vaguely concerned she’d done actual damage. As if remembering those moments, her wrist twinges with pain.

After Bellamy hangs up, she tapes photographs up to cover the worst of the marks. There’s a picture of the coffee shop from the day she took the place over, a selfie that Raven took with Harper, a group shot of Echo, Raven, Harper and Bellamy with coffee cake and espresso cups. In the box with the rest of the photographs, there’s a torn piece of printer paper - a picture she would almost rather forget.

She holds it in both hands, her clumsy left thumb wrinkling the paper slightly, and regards the small fragment of a memory. After a long, solemn moment, she tapes it in the center of her makeshift collage. Her brother’s smile follows her, defiant, sharp and wistful, until she goes downstairs to start her day.

* * *

The bakery is less than two months from opening - or, at least, so the sign on the front door says - when John comes in again.

“Morning, ladies,” he says, nodding to Raven, who grins, and Echo, who glares. “Morning, Emori.”

“What, I’m not a lady?” she teases. She can’t help herself.

He rolls his eyes and hands her a flat white box. “Whatever you say.”

She opens the lid. “Doughnuts.”

John stuffs his hands in his pockets again. “I broke in my new kitchen. Thought you might want some.”

She doesn’t know what to say. Thankfully, Echo saves her by swiping a glazed one from over her shoulder, and Raven follows suit with a gleeful, “Ooh, doughnuts!”

“Thank you, John,” she says, lowly. When he smiles, she is immediately disarmed, so much so that she forgets what else she was going to say until he’s halfway to the door.

“Wait!” He turns. “I slept in on Saturday. Until 8:35.”

He smiles again, softer this time. “I’m glad.”

* * *

John comes every Monday after that. He makes  _ pao doce  _ \- Portuguese sweet bread - for Raven and cuts Emori a second slice when no one else is looking. He trades a knife sharpener for one of Echo’s famous lattes and brings Harper pins for the cap she wears while at work.

He never brings Emori anything, though. She’s not sure what to make of it, but she tries not to let it get to her.

One Monday, the week before the shop opens, an unfamiliar face arrives. He introduces himself as Monty Green, John’s newest - only - part-time employee, and Emori can’t help but grin when she sees his eyes linger on Harper’s for a second too long.

“She’s single, you know,” Raven teases, yelping when Echo throws a spoon at her head. “Dammit, coffee filters only!”

“I know,” Monty says at the same time Harper squawks, “ _ Raven!”  _

“Wait…” Raven peers at Monty. “Aren’t you-”

“Your downstairs neighbor?” Monty asks. “Yes.” He waves at Harper. “Good to see you again, Harper.”

Harper waves back. Monty laughs at Echo’s enraged expression, then turns to the register, where Emori is already marking a cup with John’s usual drink order. “Can I get- Oh. You already know.”

Emori is more frustrated than pleased at the burn in her cheeks. “John comes here a lot.”

Monty frowns. “John?”

Emori nods. “Yeah. You know, your boss?”

Monty shakes his head slowly. “No one calls him John. He all but bites your head off if you call him anything other than Murphy. I only know his first name because I saw it on the mail.”

This new information sends a jolt of something warm to Emori’s stomach. She keeps it to herself, though, and sets about making the drink: four shots of espresso, nonfat milk and two pumps of sugar. Strong, bitter and slightly sweet. She hears Raven’s voice in her head, saying that there’s a euphemism there, but keeps that to herself too.

“Wait,” she says suddenly, moments away from handing the drink to Monty. Pulling out her Sharpie again, she writes  _ John (Murphy?) _ , then hands it back. “You didn’t want anything?”

Monty shakes his head, holding up a flaky chocolate croissant. “Harper gave me this. That’s enough sweetness for today.”

Echo groans, Raven  _ awwww _ s and Harper laughs Monty all the way out the door.

“That was so cheesy,” Emori grumbles, smiling fondly at Harper when the younger girl’s cheeks go a little pink. 

“Maybe,” Harper shrugs. “But it was fun.”

The rest of the morning comes and goes. Raven flirts openly with a customer, flustering him so much that he forgets his motorcycle helmet near the handoff plane and has to double back to get it.

“You could just ride without it!” Raven shouts at his retreating back.

“That’s what she said,” Echo mutters under her breath, grinning when Emori laughs.

“Did I miss the joke?” John asks, appearing at the counter behind Emori so quickly that she doesn’t quite manage to wipe the smile from her face before turning to face him. 

She catches a glimpse of her face in the window across from her. Her smile is still there, still real, and the lightness that fills her chest in that moment is so intense that she can’t quite make herself stop feeling, at least not in this moment. 

“No joke,” she says to John. “Just Echo imitating Michael Scott.”

“I don’t know who that is,” Echo says, a bit haughty, breezing past Emori to the back.

“You’ve never seen The Office?” John asks, obviously deeply offended. “Emori, what are you teaching your baristas?”

“How to make coffee?” she snarks. “What are you doing here, anyway? Monty came in this morning for you; don’t you have a shop to prepare?”

“The opening is next week,” he says, shrugging. “All I can do is obsess over what kind of cake I’m making for the party Monty is making me throw.”

“Grand openings are fun,” Raven says from the espresso machine. “Can we come?”

John shrugs, then sets a coffee cup down on the counter. It’s his, from this morning. Emori frowns. “Was there something wrong with it?”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t sleep well; just wanted a refill.”

Oh. Okay. “Sure, coming right up.” She makes to pass the cup to Raven - ignoring the drop in her heart and the scolding in her head that says  _ you wanted him to want to see you, stupid girl  _ \- but John stops her. 

“You make it,” he says softly.

“O...kay.” She makes it halfway to the bar before the scribbles on the cup catch her eye. Her  _ (Murphy?)  _ has been crossed out, neatly and precisely.

She gets him a new cup, but the old one sits beside the espresso machine the rest of the day.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re very obvious,” Echo tells him when he comes in for a cup of mid-afternoon tea.
> 
> “I know,” he says, watching Emori maneuver around Raven, a box of coffee filters balanced on one arm. “And she’s very cute.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, unedited, except by me. Roast me for any errors.

“Where’s Emori?” Murphy asks, leaning his forearms on the handoff plane and watching Harper pull espresso shots by hand for an overly-picky customer. Outside, rain hammers against the shop’s glass windows. It’s a gloomy Monday morning and, like it or not, Murphy had been looking forward to seeing Emori’s easy smile and clever eyes.

To his surprise, Harper’s face pinches. “She’s...not in today,” she says diplomatically, avoiding Murphy’s eyes.

“What happened?” Unexplained worry flits in his stomach. “Is she okay?”

Raven beckons Murphy over to the cash register, sparing Harper from another line of panicked questioning.

“It’s the anniversary of something pretty shitty,” she whispers. Murphy frowns. “She...has a hard time getting out of bed on days like this. I’m letting her be.”

“She lives upstairs, right?” Murphy asks, though he already knows the answer.

To his surprise, Raven doesn’t try to stop him. In fact, she holds the door to the back room open for him.  “Be careful,” she murmurs as he passes her.

“I will,” he says from the rickety stairs. He goes through a heavy wood door and through a narrow hallway before reaching her place. The door is unlocked, so he goes through that too.

“Emori?” he calls into the dark, one-room apartment. The kitchen is sparse and clean; a rickety wooden table is strewn with papers and files, but her bed is a mess. Upon further inspection, it’s because she’s in it, just like Raven said.

“Emori?” he says again, in a whisper this time. She stirs, but says nothing. When he comes a little closer, he can see tear tracks dried on her cheeks. “Emori, what-”

“Go away,” she says softly, sounding more petulant than he’s ever heard her. He’s known for a while that’s she’s not necessarily happy - there’s always something tugging at her smile whenever she looks at him that hints at a dark shadow over her shoulder - but this is the most sadness he’s ever seen from her.

“I’m not going to do that,” he says, boldly, sitting on the edge of her bed. She looks up at him, her face half-hidden by a blanket, her red-rimmed eyes void of emotion. “When’s the last time you ate?”

“There’s nothing in the kitchen,” she mutters, her tone daring him to argue. “I’m not hungry.”

He gets up after a moment to pour her a glass of water. Later, he thinks, he’ll bring her something from his apartment, a bowl of soup and a piece of fresh bread with butter.

“Why are you here?” she asks him, holding the glass in her smaller hand. Her larger hand is wrapped tightly in some kind of black cloth. He wants to reach for it, unwrap it, but something holds him back.

“I was worried about you,” he says honestly.

She sighs, something gut-deep and broken. “You shouldn’t be.”

“Raven said it’s a bad day,” he says, treading lightly. “Do you want to talk about it?”

She shakes her head, sniffles a little bit. “I just want…” she trails off, vacant eyes staring at the wall across from her bed, where a haphazard collage of photographs adorn a scarred white surface.

“What makes it better?” he asks her softly, after a moment of dark silence. She shrugs. “Do you want to do something?”

She looks at him. “Like what?”

“Come over to the bakery,” he suggests. “You shouldn’t be alone today. Come over; I’ll teach you how to make something and we can pig out on sugar.”

She looks at him hesitantly. The corner of her mouth twitches. “Okay.”

He waits by the door while she gets dressed. He can tell it takes all her effort to put on a pair of sweatpants and a long sweater and jam her feet into her worn combat boots, and he’d never tell her, but he’s damn proud that she’s trying.

They take the back way out of the shop so none of Emori’s employees see her and run through the rain to his bakery, where they turn on music and dance their way through an almost-failed attempt at making light, flaky croissants.

“You live upstairs too, right?” she asks at one point. The sound of her voice, gravel and rock, strength and sadness, startles him.

“Yep.”

She looks up at the ceiling. “Got anything to eat up there? Other than pastries, I mean.”

He knows from experience that eating is hard on days like this. “Yeah,” he says softly, and his heart nearly stops when her hand touches his on their way upstairs.

He ends up making her soup and bread right there in his shoebox apartment, and they sit at his kitchen table and eat side by side. Her breathing goes ragged every so often; he knows this means she’s holding back tears, and tries to distract her every time, either by cracking a lame joke or turning up whatever song is playing.

“My brother died a year ago today,” she says softly, just as his playlist is about to change songs. He hastily hits pause and listens. “We didn’t end on good terms. He abandoned me and I didn’t really forgive him until-”

She breaks off with a shudder. Murphy reaches for her shoulders, wraps a careful arm around them. “I’m sorry,” he tells her gently. 

“I wish I had more time,” she whispers, leaning her head on his shoulder. “I loved him even though he hurt me. He didn’t know that.”

Murphy rubs slow circles on her shoulder with his thumb. “He did. I can guarantee he did.”

Emori laughs, a wet sound without much humor. “A regular of mine - a friend, I guess? - he says the same thing. He’s an older brother, too, so…”

Murphy’s heart aches when a tear drops from her cheek onto his shirt. “It gets easier,” he murmurs. “If that helps.”

“When?” Her voice cracks.

Murphy sighs. “I wish I knew.”

* * *

He leaves an unsigned note taped to her door early the next morning while his bread is rising.

_ Someday, you’ll wake up on the anniversary and feel sad, but it won’t stop you. You’ll mourn a little bit but you’ll be able to keep going. There’s nothing wrong with what you did yesterday, though. It might choke you for a little while longer, but you won’t always need to sleep to avoid the hurt. _

* * *

“Thank you,” she whispers in his ear after surprising him with a tight hug when he came in during his lunch break. “I needed that. Yesterday, I mean.”

He hugs her back, enjoying how solid she is to hold, how carefully her smaller hand rests between the spaces of his shoulder blades. “Any time,” he says, and means it.”

* * *

Things are different between them after that. He knows they would be, but he’s unprepared for how. She’s more open with him now: she smiles easier, laughs a little louder, teases him more often. He’s always had a crush on her - has since the moment he met her - but now he’s, quite simply, totally gone.

“You’re very obvious,” Echo tells him when he comes in for a cup of mid-afternoon tea.

“I know,” he says, watching Emori maneuver around Raven, a box of coffee filters balanced on one arm. “And she’s very cute.”

“I know I am,” Raven snarks, winking at Murphy. Emori turns around and grins at him and  _ damn. _ If he ever gets tired of that smile, someone should just put him out of his misery.

“You okay, John?” she asks, her eyebrow quirking ever-so-slightly. The sound of his name in her mouth always sends a shiver down his spine.

“Just fine.”

* * *

“I take it you’re not mad at him for stealing our business anymore, are you?” Murphy hears Raven ask as he enters the coffee shop, shaking rain from his hair. He halts near the bookshelf and listens.

“He’s not really stealing anything,” Emori says softly. Her voice warms something in his chest. “We’re coexisting very peacefully, if you haven’t noticed.”

Raven snorts. “Sure. How long until you bang him?”

Emori makes an inelegant, offended noise that Murphy can’t help but find adorable. “Really, Raven?”

“Yeah. Really.”

Murphy rounds the bookcase then, acting totally natural. Emori’s expressive eyes never waver from his. “Morning,” he greets them, blinking at Raven when she makes some kind of sound that somehow sounds sarcastic. “What?”

“Ignore her,” Emori says. “Want your usual?”

He nods. “But I’ve got a question too.” The idea has literally been in his mind for all of five seconds, but better late than never.

“What is it?”

He realizes that he’s wearing the same sweater he wore the day he met her. That’s oddly symbolic, he thinks, and chooses to take it as a sign. “Would you go on a date with me?”

She smiles, sudden and bright. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Raven’s shout of  _ FINALLY!!!  _ sends them both into a fit of laughter.


End file.
